Plea to retrieve jewels stolen from pawn shop

A section of residents of Narimedu in Madurai urged the Collector to take steps to retrieve around 1,500 sovereigns of gold jewellery, pledged by about 950 residents in a pawn shop on Kattabomman Street in their area, which was reportedly stolen in February 2019.

The residents, who had given a petition to the Collector in this regard last week, came to the Collectorate on Monday to follow up on it. C. Jothi, one of the petitioners, said that for many decades the residents had been regularly pledging their jewellery in the pawn shop to meet their emergency financial needs. “Since most of us are daily wage earners, we pawn our jewellery and other valuables in the shop to pay school fee of our children or to meet emergency financial requirements,” he said.

Around 1,500 sovereigns of gold jewellery were looted from the shop in February 2019, said A. Meenakshi Sundaram, an auto-rickshaw driver. “There were no CCTV cameras in the shop and the owners had not taken other safety precautions,” he said.

Though investigations have been continuing for nearly a year-and-a-half, there had not been any progress, said R. Selvi, another resident. “Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the residents have lost their jobs and are financially struggling. So we request the officials to expedite the investigation and recover the stolen jewellery at the earliest,” she added.

If the stolen jewellery is not retrievable, the officials must at least compensate the residents with cash that is equivalent to the worth of the jewellery, said K. Lakshmi, another resident.

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